Don Finley: What’s making you sick?

Each winter, the two viruses doctors and public health agencies keep a close eye on are influenza and RSV.

RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, usually causes milder, cold-like symptoms in adults. But it can pack quite a wallop in very young kids. In particularly nasty years, local pediatric wards are filled with sick children.

As for flu, it’s the 400-pound gorilla of respiratory infections, responsible for killing, on average, 36,000 people nationwide each year, most of them over 65, and hospitalizing another 200,000.

As of Monday, neither flu nor RSV was circulating locally yet. Monday was also officially the first day that anyone could theoretically get a flu shot – not just those at high risk for complications – under new federal guidelines. Those guidelines are voluntary, however, and the odds are that doctors who have vaccine were giving it to anybody who wanted it.

Plenty of vaccine is available this season, unlike the last two. If your personal doctor doesn’t have any, the Metropolitan Health District is offering it. For details, call (210) 207-8750 or go here for clinic times and locations.

Texas MedClinics has been giving flu shots. Walgreens offers an online locator for flu shot clinics at local stores.

So if it’s not the flu or RSV that’s making you sick right now, what is it? It might be a virus called parainfluenza 1, which is circulating in San Antonio. The virology lab at University Hospital has isolated a bunch of these in recent days.

Parainfluenza often causes croup in children and cold-like symptoms in the rest of us. No particular treatment for this except lots of rest and fluids.